Blizzard on Guild Reputation: Is the cap acceptable?

There was a semi-heated discussion going on (which has since magically disappeared) on the official forums regarding the concept and mechanics behind guild reputation. As many of you already know, guild reputation can be earned by completing various tasks, such as completing a dungeon or boss kill in a guild group, or by turning in quests. Guild reputation is required for certain rewards earned via guild leveling. The current guild reputation cap is 3500 (adjusted to 3675 and 3850 via the Saranno Famosi Guild Perks).

For many players, this simply isn't enough. Others are disappointed in the lack of options for which to actually gain the reputation - and I have to say I agree with them there. I've been the guild master of my own guild for well over a year now and despite being one of the most active players and participating in basically everything that we do, I have lower guild reputation to than my guildies thanks to a reputation bug that Blizzard refused to admit existed. I gain reputation for completing seemingly random quests and occasionally whenever we kill a boss, though I agree that I'd much rather see reputation awarded for doing things that actually benefit the guild. I wish I could do something for my guys who are regularly taking the time out of their own schedules to farm trade materials for the guild bank, or who constantly help other players by providing free enchants and other such things. Wouldn't it be cool if guild leaders had a reserve of guild reputation that they could hand out to individuals? I found it rather hilarious that the only presented reasoning behind not awarding reputation for such tasks is that it would turn earning guild reputation into a "fun farming game" - news flash! For quite a few of us, WoW's already a farming game. Have you seen flask requirements (thankfully they're getting changed). Besides, since when has earning reputation not been a farm?

Blizzard posted Bashiok has taken the reins of the appropriately titled "Guild Rep is 100% Stupid." thread and offers insight on the decisions behind sources of guild reputation and its weekly cap. How do you guys feel about guild reputation? Anyone else find it as underwhelming as I do, and the cap and seemingly arbitrary means for gain relatively frustrating? Read on for the full posts and tell us what you think!

Thank you, Blizz. I thoroughly enjoy your design of using an arbitrary number to dictate what I can and cannot have in a guild I have been for months. It makes absolutely no sense that the only way to build my rep up with a guild is to go around farming quests/dailies. that are 100% worthless for me outside of building my guild rep. That is quite possibly the dumbest thing I've ever seen implemented in wow currently. It's understandable you didn't want people to join a guild and instantly obtain all the associated perks of that guild, and if that is the case, then the perks should have been based on time spent as a guild member. Not time spent doing dumb, absolutely useless quests.

For those of you who are going to bring up Arenas, Rated Bgs, etc. No. I have done countless Tol Barads, countless arenas in both 2s and 3s, and countless bgs and at least 15 dungeons/heroics and I'm 1700 through neutral. There is absolutely no excuse for such an abysmal rep gain. We are a PvP guild. We shouldn't have to be PvEing, and pointless PvE at that, so we can enjoy guild perks. Period.

100%!? That's like... all percent.

Well, I think this is a valid complaint being that there's an initial buy-in period where you're kind of wondering why you have to level up reputation with a guild you've been in for a year, but that's sort of the nature of implementing new features like this.

You are correct in that we do not want people to join guilds, be able to immediately buy rewards that the guild unlocked, and jet. Your idea of unlocking rewards based on time spent in the guild instead of contribution isn't quite right either.

Guild rep exists to gate rewards based on someone's actual contributions to their guild, not just being some dope on the roster. Jumping in to guild dungeon and raid runs (with 80% members, until 4.0.6 which drops 5 person dungeons to variable gains based on 3/5, 4/5, and 5/5), winning rated bg's, or earning guild achievements, all help earn guild rep. And yes, so do quests, should you find yourself doing them.

The point is not to force you to do things you do not want to do, but instead be rewarded for participating in activities with your guild. And it uses criteria that ideally keep it from getting too 'gamey'. We could probably say if you make a flask, give it to a guild mate, and they drink it, you get some guild rep. And then that type of action turns into a fun farming game that has nothing to do with actually encouraging guild interaction. The criteria we've set are hopefully those that are both beneficial to the guild and its members, as well as avoiding making grindy actions the best way to get rep.

As far as making it account wide, I'm not a designer, but that definitely hinders, again, the guild participation factor. Once you have guild rep set on one character, and if that then applied account wide, your desire to contribute to guild content that isn't pushing gearing your character drops substantially. However, if you have an alt that's 80, yeah you probably will want to join in on that Blackrock Caverns run being put together. Otherwise you're a jaded 85 guildie who has variable interest in actually helping someone else out (Yes, yes, I'm sure you're the most selfless and helpful person in your guild, but that scenario is too often the rule and not the exception).

As I said initially this can be a weird start conceptually, but while contributing with guild members you're gaining rep, and you'll get access to those rewards from then on. As this is still a fairly new and fairly big and complex system we're watching it very closely, and fully intend to keep adding to it and improving upon it. Your constructive feedback is welcome.

I was wondering, shouldn't the "Guild Master" be exalted?

So you can sit back and let everyone else level the guild and unlock rewards for you? Conceptually it makes sense, you're the guild master! But aside from that notion of what 'makes sense', it would feel really crappy to the other people in the guild.

The point is not to force you to do things you do not want to do, but instead be rewarded for participating in activities with your guild. And it uses criteria that ideally keep it from getting too 'gamey'. We could probably say if you make a flask, give it to a guild mate, and they drink it, you get some guild rep. And then that type of action turns into a fun farming game that has nothing to do with actually encouraging guild interaction.

how do random dailies or fishing quests have anything to do with guild interaction?Not a whole lot directly, but it is a way for the super low pop guilds or very inactive guilds, and their members, to rep up. Say your guild has 10 people and of those 10 people a couple log in maybe once a week, we want there to be some way that you'll eventually level your guild, and in addition, be able to rep up and purchase rewards. It's going to be slower, for sure, but it's there.

Bashiok... I think this logic is somewhat flawed to be honest. Most people would not stay in guild where the GM sits back and lets the rest of the guild do things for him. The reason my guild exists is because of our desire to see the guild run the way we all collectively thought was right... so we left the guild we were in and started this one.

I would argue that most would stay as long as the guild was otherwise functioning to their satisfaction. I'm glad your guild was built and formed around a group mantra and you're close, that's awesome, but you have to understand that is not the case for all guilds.

As for your previous comment regarding flasks etc. I think I can see who contributes to the guild on a larger scale as well via the use of the Guild Bank. Isn't helping the guild aquire the mats and items that help us all do things a valid part of contributing to a guild?

Sure, but again, that can be gamed. Making guild rep a meta game of depositing mats, to remove them, launder them, and re-deposit to exalted is not the point of the system. And while it would be cool to recognize those things, there's simply too many loopholes.

I have guild members who tirelessly make new epics for our members and give them those items for NOTHING. Crafter items that they had to get the Chaos orbs for while we were running Heroics. Yet I can not offer those players any increased Rep within the guild?

No, but, you can give back in other ways.

That does bring up an interesting idea of gifting someone rep who helped you out. An 85 jumps in to help you in a normal dungeon and you want to toss some rep his way for helping. Mmmm... I'm not sure how it could work and not just be a back scratcher, but it sounds cool.

So if this is the case, and you want people that contribute to gain the rewards, why is there an arbitrary weekly cap on how much reputation you can earn?

This seems like it's nothing more than another rep. grind designed to take as long as possible while keeping players chained down.

Something isn't arbitrary just because you don't understand it. Let's be a little more open minded here.

The weekly cap helps pace people so they aren't encouraged to do the most menial tasks to grind the rep 24/7, but instead, ideally, cap their rep while doing their normal weekly guild runs or PvP bouts.

Commenti

Commento di Wasselin

My guild is really small. We have about 14 people, but we still want to get together and do 10 man raiding.

This guild system isn't really working out for us. A lot of the guild achievements are pretty impossible, which would be okay if they weren't linked to things like fish feasts and guild cauldrons.

People help out in guilds in all kinds of different ways. If I was awarding rep to my guild I would award it for just logging on and talking in guild chat, because I wish people would do more of that.

Commento di Minipretzels

on 2011-01-17T15:22:11-06:00

Interesting argument and ideals. It does seem to be up for discussion, though to me it hasn't phased me yet. In fact I never realized what the actual cap was until now, but a new way to earn guild rep would be something to help.

A repeatable turn-in quest focusing in on your professions that require you to donate a certain item to the guild? A guild daily duegeon quest? Just throwing ideas out there is all. Granted you basically do both of these anytime you want, a specific focused task can help you become more involved with your guild while making sure what you donate not only helps the guild, but you directly as well ( instant rep).

Still, only time will tell!

Commento di Miyari

on 2011-01-17T15:24:19-06:00

A repeatable turn-in quest focusing in on your professions that require you to donate a certain item to the guild?

That's an awesome idea. Kind of like those old AQ40 war effort quests - the guild needs more !

Commento di Sweetscot

on 2011-01-17T15:28:36-06:00

Bring on the fun farming game! That sounds like the best form of helping any guild, be it a raiding, leveling, or casual hang-out guild, that I know of (other than raid participation in raid guild) and would be a much better thing to reward than questing or even doing 5mans.

Also I find it ironic that they admit to and some would say endorse gaming of their ilevel limit system but won't give out rep for people putting flasks in the gbank because it could be gamed? wth?

Commento di SaintStryfe

on 2011-01-17T15:29:48-06:00

Well remember: the Guild Achieves are just that: Achieves. There was talk of making them count for experience, but they nixed that idea before launch. Achievements have no bearing on your performance.

Commento di Contay

on 2011-01-17T15:29:55-06:00

I think the cap should only exist for activities that could be done without the assistance of a guildmate (ie, doing leveling/daily quests) but you can always continue to get reputation regardless of how many guild run boss kills and guild PvP you accomplish.

Kinda like how you would get reputation with the Sons of Hodir or Netherwing -- there's only the set amount of rep you could gain each day, but the only outlier where you could continue to gain rep was the turnins of Everfrost and Relics/Eggs.

Commento di Chronicgamer36

on 2011-01-17T15:30:49-06:00

Me and a bunch of my friends (Who are also my guildies) had the same conversation about the "Shouldn't GMs of the guilds be auto-exalted?"But these topics do point out the tedium it takes to get guild reputation. Questing for 3 weeks to get just honored kinda tans my hide.

Yet, I digress. The rep system in most of the ways sane, intelligent, and reasonable people want it to be would be great, except for the players that want it the easy way, but those people are easily taken care of, by the person/people with the power to remove them.

Commento di NerdEsq

on 2011-01-17T15:33:14-06:00

Bashiok probably doesn't read this, but the original thread seems to have disappeared.

However, why would he write:"Guild rep exists to gate rewards based on someone's actual contributions to their guild, not just being some dope on the roster. Jumping in to guild dungeon and raid runs (with 80% members, until 4.0.6 which drops 5 person dungeons to variable gains based on 3/5, 4/5, and 5/5), winning rated bg's, or earning guild achievements, all help earn guild rep. And yes, so do quests, should you find yourself doing them."

That was taken out shortly after Cata launch, wasn't it? Is this a hint that it is coming back or that a Blizz employee doesn't remember how it works?

Commento di ScytheNoire

on 2011-01-17T15:33:19-06:00

Here's how Blizzard works. They say that things are fine and their way is the right way. Players complain for years about it being broken and not working properly. After years of complaining Blizzard finally changes things to the way players wanted it all along and Blizzards touts it as their own brilliant rebalancing. So complain as we may, offer fixes as we may, they'll ignore us for a few years before fixing it and claiming those fixes as their own. It's the way of Blizzard.

Commento di Minipretzels

on 2011-01-17T15:35:04-06:00

A repeatable turn-in quest focusing in on your professions that require you to donate a certain item to the guild?

That's an awesome idea. Kind of like those old AQ40 war effort quests - the guild needs more !

Indeed. I always look back and thought how amazing it would be to have every possible guildie contribute to the guild to help others.

It seems to make sense right? You contribute to the guild directly by donating crafted items, say a certain amount of rep for blues and a higher reward for epics. In return people acknowledge your work and you become "well known" (rep wise/guild).

Commento di DruidWorgen

on 2011-01-17T15:35:35-06:00

Well remember: the Guild Achieves are just that: Achieves. There was talk of making them count for experience, but they nixed that idea before launch. Achievements have no bearing on your performance.

Not quite. They counted for experience on the first two days of Cataclysm. Anyone who was online and watched their guild delevel when the hotfix was applied can tell you the idea was most certainly NOT nixed before launch.

Commento di Sweetscot

on 2011-01-17T15:37:25-06:00

Well remember: the Guild Achieves are just that: Achieves. There was talk of making them count for experience, but they nixed that idea before launch. Achievements have no bearing on your performance.

Not quite. They counted for experience on the first two days of Cataclysm. Anyone who was online and watched their guild delevel when the hotfix was applied can tell you the idea was most certainly NOT nixed before launch.

Yea that was pretty unpleasant :(

Commento di Miyari

on 2011-01-17T15:40:35-06:00

I was pretty excited to do guild achievements to earn reputation and guild experience. When they removed that, suddenly the idea of bothering 10 people together just to have a classic 10-man count as a 'guild run' wasn't so hot anymore.

Commento di Fulgorater

on 2011-01-17T15:46:14-06:00

I was pretty excited to do guild achievements to earn reputation and guild experience. When they removed that, suddenly the idea of bothering 10 people together just to have a classic 10-man count as a 'guild run' wasn't so hot anymore.

exactly this... I hate seeing grey'd achieves... but having a terrible time to get 3 other people with me to blast some stuff out..,

Commento di owlmanatt

on 2011-01-17T15:47:28-06:00

I am pretty annoyed that nobody is talking about the guild XP cap being reset every day instead of adding on to what's left from the previous day. As it is right now, if you miss your XP cap, you are behind and completely unable to catch up with other guilds until they've hit L25.

There's no reason for it to not add on to yesterday's cap. The point of the daily XP cap is to prevent guilds from leveling too quickly, but all it's doing right now is punishing small guilds for not running 3 - 4 heroic guild groups every night.

Commento di timothye81

on 2011-01-17T15:55:15-06:00

I am a Guild Master, my guild was made before Cata, and some of the redundant guild achievements are not available, as in "Everybody needs a logo", most of the guild consists of my alts, and a few unique low levels. I spend hours a day on my main toon and feel it is almost impossible to level without doing guild raids or guild pvp. At the rate of doing 25 daily qsts, it will still take me a month to level my guild past lvl 1. I understand Blizz would like a guild to be more like a team than solo efforts, but when everyone on a server already has a favorite guild, and have made their alliances within that guild, it makes leveling a level 1 guild impossible because no-one wants to join a guild they are going to take more time leveling than another guild, which already has the Perk they are wanting. Leaving close-knit family type guilds, and guilds that consist of a few IRL friends, to suffer behind the curve of guilds exceeding 100 members.

Commento di cholland

Especially for someone like me who likes those sort of stuff and could "grind" it for the guild; only to have another guildie(who play a LOT more than me) grind up the last 200 or w/e and reap the benefits of the actual achievement :<

Commento di Hannman

on 2011-01-17T16:17:50-06:00

What about the "known issue" where some guilds have lost upwards of four plus days guild XP as it hasn't reset? Not the guilds fault but it puts them at a disadvantage over guilds where the XP does reset. Are Blizzard g oing to compensate the guilds who are affected? Hell no. I've had GMs tell me there is nothing they can do and we won't be credited with the lost XP, due to an issue they know about and have logs of - yet the big mega member guilds sail onwards and upwards knowing that very little stands between them and "world / realm first" achievements.Guild XP is a nice idea but in practice, in game, it's sucked. I'm a GM and sure I want to earn it with my members and participate every step of the way which is why we don't get auto exalted. I'm fine with that. Sucks, but hey, should a GM who steps down auto lose that XP while someone gains it when they take over? I just feel for the smaller guilds with a tight knit community feel who are losing out while the big top end raiding guilds that knock down raids like a house of cards hit cap within an hour.Had so much promise but in practice, it just don't seem to work for the smaller "family" group guilds.

Commento di NecroSen

on 2011-01-17T16:21:08-06:00

Take a page from EVE Online, a vastly more complex MMO from which (I believe) many of the current guild mechanics that were introduced with Cata are derived from. Guilds, or "corporations", in EVE can set up contracts for specific members or as an open task. The leader and officers set up contracts for tasks that they feel need to get done, plug in some monetary reward, and let the members take care of it.

With guilds becoming more than just groups of people in WoW now, something like this could be implemented. Guilds already started gaining extra money when they hit Lvl 5 for Cash Flow (EVE does it too, they just call it what it is: "tax"), so why not use a sliver of that new income to reward their own members automatically for turning in useful items to the bank?

Commento di JamesKilton

on 2011-01-17T16:21:50-06:00

Cataclysm has some great additions to WoW but also some features that are 100% WTF, with the entire Guild Leveling system being the worst. As the GM of my guild, I definitely wouldn't want to be immediately put at exalted, that's just kind of cheap, so no problem there. However, I struggle to even get my own main character enough guild rep during the week to make some progress to exalted. I expected raiding and downing bosses to give a considerable amount of rep (I mean, isn't that the definition of guild advancement in PvE?) but it feels like I get almost nothing. I've accepted for now that I need to be running the Tol'Barad dailies (oh boy is that another WTF of epic proportions...) to keep my stream of rep coming.

I have literally nothing to convince people to contribute to the guild advancement system. This entire system has been nerfed into a state where it's almost something you can't, and eventually don't, think about because there's nothing you can do, that you can put time and effort into, to make a difference.

In short, this system is not advancing my guild in any way. It has become a tacked-on meta game that's almost as hands-on as EVE's offline character advancement.

And the fact that a blue said they don't want WoW to become a "fun farming game" would be funny if it didn't make me cry. WoW IS A FARMING GAME. And you know what? IT'S FUN, most of the time! Try saying that about 99% of the other MMOs out there. Does Blizzard want WoW to be an unfun farming game? Do they not want it to be a "farming game" (I'll reiterate what the OP said: *cough* flask requirements *cough*)?

I was telling myself that Lich King would be my last expansion, then a bunch of awesomeness came out in Cataclysm. Now I'm wondering if the not-so-awesome are worth the awesome =/